t,
and again by triple your experience and information; calculate from
these data _her_ powers of doing good in such cases, and then see
whether, in helping to brand her and fetter her in the exercise of such
powers, you may not 'haply be found to fight against God.'"

"I will not speak so again,--at least before I think and know. You have
forgiven me. Now appoint me my penance."

"Do what more you can for Nelly, then. I can do little or nothing. In
fact, my visits seem to embarrass and agitate her so much, that I am
sometimes afraid they hurt her more than they help her. She suffers more
in mind than body, I suspect. How, she will not tell me, and perhaps she
cannot. It may be that she is sick from sorrow; or, on the other hand,
her sorrow may be only an illusion of her sickness. It is all, from
first to last, a mere miserable groping and working in the dark. In the
mean time her constitution and character are forming for life. It is
enough to make one's heart ache to look at the poor baby, and think what
an unsatisfactory, profitless, miserable life that may be. I need not
remind _you_, Katy, that all this is a little piece of Freemasonry
between ourselves. You are one of the exceptional and abnormal human
people before whom one can safely think aloud."

I went to Nelly that very afternoon, with some curiosity and with no
unwillingness. I had already begun to like her better than the Doctor
did, as I began to know her better. At first I had been somewhat at a
loss as to her real disposition, between the constant civility of her
manners, and the occasional sullenness of her _manner_. I was fast
making up my mind that the civility was genuine; the sullenness,
apparent only, the result of extreme shyness, despondency, and languor.
As fast as she became more and more at her ease with me, just so fast
did she become more and more engaging. She was chaotic enough, and like
a different creature on different days; but I found her, though
sometimes very childish, often sweet and never sour, unvaryingly patient
towards her very trying aunt, and only too subservient to her.

On this particular afternoon, I spied her through the best-parlor
window, sobbing dismally. When she heard and saw me, she tried to
compose herself in vain; but the only account she had to give of her
grief was, that "the mocking-bird sang so dreadfully, and the Doctor
told Aunt Cumberland she [Nelly] was not going to die. There," added
she, under her br